


Gladstone's Collar

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt on the Sherlock BBC Kink Meme: Before joining the army, John played guitar and was part of a short-lived band that nonetheless gained a small but devoted cult following. Cue this fact being outed (maybe during a case) and Sherlock listening to all their old tracks and becoming a John!groupie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gladstone's Collar

John had been relieved when the musician had shown up with a bizarre story about a missing Fender guitar, four copies of the same sheet music but with random wrong notes in each version and a Russian vocal coach. It had brought an end to Sherlock’s excruciating five-day bout of brattish boredom, from the moment the saxophonist (identified, apparently, because of her thumbs, the shape of the _labium inferius oris,_ the way she carried her shoulders) burst in.

It turned out to be nothing more complicated than an Eastern European spy syndicate, microdots distributed unevenly throughout copies of a moderately well-known jazz piece from the 80s and a box of incriminating papers. Microdots. Seriously. In this day and age? _Boring_ , as Sherlock had pronounced only a few hours after visiting the music venue.

Still, John would have preferred to head off the next round of boredom-induced tantrums (as John liked to think of them) with something other than his own secret past.

He couldn’t really blame the saxophonist. Bailey had hardly even noticed him to begin with, focused as she was on her troubles, but then the guitar had been found in an awkward space in the wings. While Sherlock had climbed the lighting rig in order to locate the box of papers (jammed in the rafters by a surprisingly agile vocal coach), John, in a fit of nostalgia, had strummed the Fender. Plucked out a few notes to test whether he could still do it. Launched into a flurry of notes, backing himself with a few hummed bars, because he found his muscle memory rusty but intact.

He’d looked up to find Sherlock and Bailey both staring at him: Sherlock with a level of consternation and Bailey, unfortunately, with dawning recognition.

“How did I miss that?” Sherlock was muttering and he leapt back onto the stage, “Perhaps you had to give up playing after the shoulder wound. But no. You stopped playing long before that. Your calluses are all wrong.”

And Bailey was saying: “Oh! My! God! You’re John Watson! **_The_** John Watson. Gladstone’s Collar John Watson!”

And then Sherlock was staring at Bailey, demanding explanations, and John tried to hide the Fender behind his back.

“You don’t know John Watson from Gladstone’s Collar?” Bailey was squeaking.

“That sentence makes no grammatical sense,” Sherlock snapped impatiently, “And of course I know John.”

“John Watson from Gladstone’s Collar. Gladstone’s Collar the **_band_** ,” said Bailey, as thought that would explain everything, which of course, to John, it did.

 Sherlock, of course, had never heard of the band. He hadn’t heard of most bands. He barely recognised references to the Beatles. An obscure, short-lived 90s punk rock band (always more rock than punk) would definitely not be in his hard drive.

Oh well, thought John. He’d been able to keep his secret past actually a _secret_ from Sherlock for a whole year. Given that Sherlock was so very…. Sherlock… this was some kind of an achievement.

Bailey had breathlessly filled Sherlock in on the details. The albums: all two of them. The shows. The inevitable break-up of the band, in gloriously messy wannabe rock star style. Mainly because the drummer and the bass player kept skiving off rehearsals, then screwing the groupies, then the roadies, then each other, before it went horribly pear-shaped and John decided he was sick of trying to stitch the band into one piece all the time and decided stitching up people would be more rewarding and less mind-fuckingly tortuous.

Even living with Sherlock was less fraught and destructive than trying to keep the band together. If NSY only knew what he’d had to put up with on tour, they’d never marvel at how he coped living with a mad genius.

On the ride home, John maintained a dignified silence while Sherlock grabbed his hands to study them for the faded but tell-tale signs of musical proficiency. Failing to elicit more than a raised eyebrow from the doctor, Sherlock tried to pry information loose with sarcasm.

“Gladstone’s Collar? Really, John?”

John shrugged. “You should have heard the ones we rejected,” he said. Then he grinned. “Thatcher’s Armpit was not the worst of them, let me tell you.”

John wished he’d been quick enough to take a photo of Sherlock’s expression for that one.

Sherlock spent three days digging for information. Sometimes very rudely. Well, most of the time, very rudely. At one point, after Sherlock demanded to know why he didn’t play any more, John responded with: “Sherlock, you don’t need my noodling about on the guitar to piss you off while you’re thinking, or throwing fits. You ‘ve got your violin for that. Besides, you’re a brilliant musician and I’m… I was… just a kid with a guitar. Trust me. You do not want to hear me play.”

“You sounded promising at the theatre.”

“…what?” Surely he’d misheard that.

“It has been some years since you’d last played, yes? Since before you were wounded, certainly. Did you play in Afghanistan at all?”

“Sometimes. In the mess hall, if someone else had a guitar. Not a lot. Not much time for it, what with the gunfire and the bombs and the field surgery and blood and everything.”

The snark was lost on his flatmate. “Nevertheless. Given it was the first time you’d held the instrument in several years, you were clearly competent. At least, you were not clearly awful.”

“Ever graceful with the compliments, I see.”

Sherlock had pulled a face and flounced off then, nicking John’s computer as he did.

“Git.” John muttered, and went out for a walk. Without planning to, he found himself staring in the window of a music shop, gazing at guitars longingly and remembering. Gladstone’s Collar. A very stupid name for a very callow band. From time to time he still got royalty cheques: one of the songs had been picked up to liven up café scenes in a teen soap. Every time the series was repated or shown for the first time in some obscure country, royalties would accrue. As songwriter, he’d earned a whole twelve pounds the last financial year.

But they’d had fun. They’d had fans. According to Bailey, they still had quite a number of them. They’d very nearly (but not quite) been famous.

Sherlock was out when John returned, so he sat at the kitchen table, pulled up a notebook and jotted down a few phrases. They didn’t work, though. It had been too long since he’d written anything, and besides, he couldn’t find suitable rhymes for either _Sherlock_ or _twat_ without a lot more thought. And maybe a guitar.

John shoved the notebook away and went looking for his computer. Perhaps he could blog the case. 

Then he saw the Google search still up on the browser, and thought maybe he should just rhyme _twat_ with _twat_ again, for emphasis.

He wasn’t even really sure why he was so pissed off, except that Sherlock would probably be in rare form when it came to lampooning his Gladstone days, and really, as much as he’d left them behind, John was fond of them. He’d enjoyed writing and playing music. Even if it was a crap band name. They hadn’t been totally awful. They’d been offered a recording deal. If only Kelly and Bean hadn’t messed it up so utterly fucking entirely.

In a lot of ways, John wasn’t sorry. Medical school had been hard work, but he’d been good at it. He was a good doctor. A good field surgeon. He’d saved more lives with his two hands in the guts and sinews of human bodies on a battlefield than he’d ever done with a Fender in his grasp.

But god, he'd loved that guitar, and making somtehing intangible and raw and messy and perfect with his hands, and not patching up other people's destruction. He'd never realised till now how much he missed it.

John went to bed before Sherlock returned, not wanting to face the inevitable derision. Sherlock Holmes was a violin virtuoso. He was not going to have a moment’s kindness for a bygone teenager’s sprawling poetry to the world, written in angst and earnestness and rock and roll.

John dreamed, for the first time in 15 years, of a gig at the town pub. The glorious stink of stale beer, mildewed carpets, the crowd, the rank microphone, teenage rock-and-roll sweat. The thrash and roar of instruments, and his own voice hurled out over the crowd.

He woke up to the sound of it still playing in his ears.

Someone was playing the Gladstone’s Collar EP. The one they’d paid for themselves.

And when he thought ‘someone’ he knew he just meant ‘Sherlock’.

Shit.

John’s first reaction was to pull a pillow over his head and try to ignore the awful truth. But Sherlock was cranking up the volume, which meant that Mrs Hudson would be up soon, shouting at them to turn it down, particularly because Sherlock was singing along, in a very loud…

 _Oh. Hang on_.

Sherlock. Was singing along. In a very beautifully modulated baritone.

Singing. Along.

With 18-year-old John.

In harmonies that were not on the album.

This was not the first time Sherlock had listened to this particular track this evening.

John rose, pulled on a dressing gown and cautiously crept down the stairs until he could just see Sherlock, standing in the middle of the living room. The detective was holding two CD covers, peering at the one on top, head tilted on one side. He was humming.

John was hardly breathing, but Sherlock looked up at him anyway.

“You should turn that down,” John said into the silence, “You’ll have Mrs Hudson evicting us before morning.”

“It took me six hours to source these,” Sherlock said. “They’re hard to find.”

“I still have a boxful in the potting shed at my parents’ house,” John confessed.

“You should sell them on Ebay,” Sherlock told him, “I found one there selling for eighty pounds.”

“You bought that for eighty pounds?”

“Of course not. That copy was in Norway. The one in Australia was almost as high, but the postage was ridiculous. No. I called in a favour from someone and took the radio station’s copies. They weren’t playing them any more. Though they want to now, of course. Charles didn’t know they even had them in the archive until I discovered them. I had to threaten to tell his employers about the case I solved for him to make him give them to me.”

“I see.”

“It’s very rough.” Sherlock frowned at the CD case. “Dreadful production values. And that drummer is not always in time.”

“Yeah. She got distracted by Bean’s arse a lot.”

“I take it Bean is the sloppy bass player?”

“Yup.” John waited apprehensively for the critique on his own playing, and his singing.

“The melodies are painfully simple.”

“Sherlock…”

“But undeniably… catchy. They get in your head.”

“Sorry. No doubt you can delete them later.”

“And there are shifts that are unexpected. I think I know where the music is going, and then it goes somewhere else.”

John didn’t know what to say to that.

“The lyrics are… not as pedestrian as you’d imagine an 18 year old would write.”

“Yeah. Well. I used to think deep thoughts. For an 18 year old.”

“I haven’t been able to interpret some of them. But they clearly have meaning to you. You sang them like they meant something.”

Oh yes. Every word meant something. Kelly and Bean didn’t get it half the time, but everything he’d felt was there, if you knew how to unlock the words.

“It is,” Sherlock said, “Surprisingly good.”

“Surprisingly?”

Sherlock considered. “Very. It is very good. In spite of the production values and your distracted drummer and the sloppy bass. You are very good.”

“I was,” John corrected him, “I was… pretty good. Not now. But then. Not half bad.”

Sherlock nodded. He put the CD cases down and picked up his violin.

“Are you going to turn that down?” John asked.

For an answer, Sherlock grinned. “I’ve listened to this particular CD six times already,” he said, “I turned it up because it needs this.” And he began to play, weaving a new counter melody under and over the track. Hiding the sloppy bass and the stuttering drum and adding some new depth to the tricky melody and not-so-pedestrian lyrics.

And John thought that, tomorrow, he might go and buy a new guitar after all.

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Guitar Man - Music Album Covers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/749829) by [Wanderer_Brown_Sheep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderer_Brown_Sheep/pseuds/Wanderer_Brown_Sheep)
  * [Fan Art for the Guitar Man series by 221b_hound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1578920) by [doctormchotson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctormchotson/pseuds/doctormchotson)
  * [[PODFIC] Gladstone's Collar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2146017) by [the_kings_daughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_kings_daughter/pseuds/the_kings_daughter)




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